Predictors of 30-Day Unplanned Readmission After Carotid Artery Stenting Using Artificial Intelligence

This study aimed to describe the rates and causes of unplanned readmissions within 30 days following carotid artery stenting (CAS) and to use artificial intelligence machine learning analysis for creating a prediction model for short-term readmissions. The prediction of unplanned readmissions after index CAS remains challenging. There is a need to leverage deep machine learning algorithms in order to develop robust prediction tools for early readmissions.

Patients undergoing inpatient CAS during the year 2017 in the US Nationwide Readmission Database (NRD) were evaluated for the rates, predictors, and costs of unplanned 30-day readmission. Logistic regression, support vector machine (SVM), deep neural network (DNN), random forest, and decision tree models were evaluated to generate a robust prediction model.

We identified 16,745 patients who underwent CAS, of whom 7.4% were readmitted within 30 days. Depression [p < 0.001, OR 1.461 (95% CI 1.231-1.735)], heart failure [p < 0.001, OR 1.619 (95% CI 1.363-1.922)], cancer [p < 0.001, OR 1.631 (95% CI 1.286-2.068)], in-hospital bleeding [p = 0.039, OR 1.641 (95% CI 1.026-2.626)], and coagulation disorders [p = 0.007, OR 1.412 (95% CI 1.100-1.813)] were the strongest predictors of readmission. The artificial intelligence machine learning DNN prediction model has a C-statistic value of 0.79 (validation 0.73) in predicting the patients who might have all-cause unplanned readmission within 30 days of the index CAS discharge.

Machine learning derived models may effectively identify high-risk patients for intervention strategies that may reduce unplanned readmissions post carotid artery stenting.

Figure 2: ROC and AUPRC analysis of DNN prediction model with other classification models on 30-day readmission data for CAS subjects.